IPP Prisoners: Recall System

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I can reassure the noble Lord that we do not intend to let this drift, but he will understand that I cannot give specific Dispatch Box commitments on dates. Frankly, that is a pessimistic view of how this will go. We are going to do this in this Parliament and are very actively working on it.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, it is important in this area, where there is a measure of agreement between the Front Benches and across the House, to make sure that we legislate to make changes in possession of the facts. The proven reoffending rate between July and September 2024 was 29.9%, but there were no equivalent figures for IPP prisoners who had been released. Would the Minister either provide the House with those figures or place the figures in the Library, so that we have the material before us before any changes are made? Will he also undertake to provide that information before making any further changes?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I do not have that information, but I will seek to get it and I will come back to the noble Lord and others about it.

On the point of principle that he raises about the risks of reoffending, this relates absolutely to the point I was making to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that we need to ensure that, when people are released, they are properly supported. That reduces the risk of being recalled. I think all noble Lords recognise that, when anyone leaves prison, there is always a risk of reoffending, and it is our job to get better at preventing that. The way to do that is to stop having overcrowded prisons and overstretched staff.

Criminal Justice Reform

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

This Government will run towards problems, including the tough decisions needed to build a justice system that is firm, fair and that protects the public. Those aims will guide me as I tackle its challenges, reform it for a sustainable future and ensure it commands the confidence of the British public. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, the exodus that we have just seen was about as chaotic as the Government’s plans that we are about to debate. However, I thank the Minister for providing us with the opportunity to ask questions.

This latest Statement represents the fifth early release scheme that has been announced since the Prime Minister took office less than two months ago. With every new announcement, victims have been left in doubt as to which criminals will be released early. I hope that the Government recognise the impact that their lack of direction will have caused.

The Minister in the other place set out that the amended early release scheme will operate for the foreseeable future, as the Sentencing Act 2026 is the basis on which standard determinate sentences will be governed. However, given that the Act, as passed by Parliament, did not exclude any of the exemptions that were announced last week, I hope that the Minister will understand why questions remain. It is right that those convicted of the crimes set out by the Justice Secretary are exempt from the early release scheme.

If noble Lords cast their minds back to January, when the House debated the Report stage of this very Act, they may remember an amendment tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie that would have achieved a very similar outcome. That amendment would have excluded a number of dangerous criminals—those serving time for some of the most serious offences—from early release.

However, the Government resisted our Conservative amendment and prevented it going into the Act. The Government were warned that the Act would reduce the time spent in prison for more than 60% of rapists and more than 80% of child sex offenders. Now, nine months later, the Government have belatedly accepted the problems with their early release scheme. Why has it taken them so long to acknowledge the warnings from my noble and learned friend? What has changed in their assessment of available prison spaces between January and September that they can now include these exemptions when they resisted them earlier this year?

There is a further important point, which I ask the Minister to consider very carefully. The statutory instrument that establishes the early exemptions says:

“The provisions listed in regulation 2 do not come into force in relation to a sentence for an offence listed in the Schedule to these Regulations”.


In other words, it is a commencement issue; it stops it coming into force. The Sentencing Act 2026 has a commencement provision. The Secretary of State has the power to commence the early release scheme on different days for different purposes. You can have a postponed commencement for offences that are subject to the early release scheme under the 2026 Act, but you can have only a postponed commencement; you cannot have no commencement.

As the Minister knows, there is case law to the effect that a permanent failure to commence the early release scheme in full would be beyond the powers of the Secretary of State because it would frustrate the will of Parliament in passing the legislation in the first place. So there is a real conflict here between government comms and government policy. Government comms are telling the media that the exempted serious offenders will remain behind bars, full stop. The mechanism that Ministers are using appears to be only temporary. Can the Minister resolve that conflict by confirming to us today that the carve-out in these regulations is, in fact, only a temporary carve-out? Will the Government therefore bring forward substantive amendments to the 2026 Act? If so, when? If he cannot confirm that today, will the Minister recognise and confirm that he has at least taken into account the real risk that this statutory instrument will be successfully overturned, following judicial review?

I turn now to IPP sentences. I acknowledge that 99% of IPP prisoners have served longer than their original tariff. Equally, of course, those prisoners were given those sentences due to the risk that they posed, so we have to consider public safety. The Minister in the other place outlined that the Government will introduce legislation on this matter. Is the Minister able to help us on whether that will be primary or secondary legislation? Is there a more specific date for its introduction than “soon”, which is one of those rather elastic words when used by Government Ministers for legislation? I ask the Minister to outline, if he can, what safeguards will remain in place to ensure that prisoners still considered too dangerous to be released are not released and that any risk to victims is, of course, taken properly into consideration.

The Minister in the other place did not share a particular target or timeline by which the Government expect to deport foreign national prisoners or to answer the question of how the Government intend to overcome the barriers posed by, in particular, Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Will the Minister set out the Government’s plans for how they will address those barriers and provide either a date by which they expect to remove all foreign national prisoners or a target number of how many they intend to remove by the end of this year? These are pressing issues; I hope that the Minister will be able to address them.

I have one final, short point. Arising from the Statement, the Government have pledged a prison-building programme that will, we are told, create 14,000 new prison places by 2031—but the problem is now. There are currently 4,000 operational prison places not in use for reasons ranging from regulations to officer shortages. What steps are the Government taking to utilise those spaces?

These matters are all of serious concern to victims. As I say, the Government have now made five different announcements on the early release scheme. I hope for clarity’s sake—and, perhaps, for the Minister’s sake as well—that this is going to be the last one. I look forward to the Minister’s responses to my questions.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we agree with the Statement that the Government clearly inherited a crisis of prison spaces, and a crisis in our criminal justice system as a whole. Frankly, the crisis was clearly attributable to many years of neglect, principally under the last Government. The Sentencing Act was a timely response to that crisis of available prison space. It is unsurprising that, as events have developed, the implementation of the Sentencing Act has changed, and the response of the Government is acceptable in that regard.

We are content to see that a great deal is being done for victims and victim support but concerned to know that public confidence in tagging and the other measures that are proposed to increase confidence and security among the public are matched by an increase in concern for the welfare of victims generally and the availability of services to those victims.

The provision of probation services plays a considerable part in the Statement. Our concern is that the resources available from the welcome allocation of £700 million for probation services by the end of this Parliament will be insufficient given the increased demands of more prisoners released into the community, more tagging, more restrictions and more exclusions, which are designed to increase confidence and security among the public. What are the Government’s plans in the event that the resources for probation prove insufficient? How far are they able to say that there will be an increase in the £700 million allocation?

I turn to prison building. There is in the Statement a pride taken in the fact that more prison spaces are to be made available. However, prison building is not the whole answer. We need to move to a more humane system that prioritises reduction in reoffending, reform and rehabilitation over simply providing more space. We have overcrowded and unhealthy prisons, many of which need replacement, but new prisons take a great deal of time to build. There are delays in planning, in getting planning permission, in design and in building new prisons. Can the Minister give us details of those delays in the prisons that have been recently opened?

The Statement also talks about building more cells within existing prisons. That is well and good, but the problem may be that those new cells in existing prisons will put more pressure and more need for spaces on the rest of the facilities in those prisons. How far have the Government considered ways of mitigating that?

Finally, on a more positive note, we very much welcome the commitment to legislation to end the complete scandal of IPP sentences before the end of this Parliament. It is monstrous that a sentence that was abolished in 2013 should still be keeping prisoners behind bars when those prisoners would have been released years ago had they been given sentences that fitted their crimes.

I hear the concerns about security. Nevertheless, prisoners on determinate sentences are released into the community, and it is welcome to hear that the same is going to happen for IPP prisoners. We accept the invitation to work cross-party with the Government to work out how this can be achieved, but it would be interesting to hear from the Minister today the detail of how this is going to be achieved within the timescale and what measures that are not currently in place will be taken to that end.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, at about 8.30 pm on the evening of Saturday 15 April I came home from synagogue with my late father. As we did every week, we conducted religiously our family’s two rituals. First, there was a short ceremony to mark the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the working week. Secondly, we turned on the radio to get the Liverpool score—and I will never forget what we heard. We did not get the result of a football match. Like the noble Lord, Lord Barber, who I think said that he tuned in after a wedding, we were confronted with a human tragedy.

By that time some, but not all, of the terrible facts were known. The disaster had been unfolding in the national media for about five hours. Many had done their best to help, in dreadful circumstances. I think everybody who heard the personal witness of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester could not help but be incredibly moved by it. By the time we switched on the radio, the death toll was already appallingly high. Shankly, of course, had famously joked that football was more important than life and death. That night, we learned the terrible truth: it is not.

I do not recall that we yet knew that there were 94 victims on that day, whose names are now inscribed on a fitting memorial. We rightly now mourn the 97, with the tragic additions of Lee Nicol a few days later, then later still Tony Bland and then, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, Andrew Devine, whose family went through particular pain, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, reminded us.

I also remember the following morning. Sundays were often quiet in Liverpool, but that Sunday there was an almost palpable sense of silence and loss. Sometimes, of course, there really are no words. In this House, however, we deal only in words, so I come to this Bill with a particular personal background.

I begin by making a point which has already been made by many others. But, if a former President of the Supreme Court has ruled that we can repeat propositions, a mere shadow Attorney-General is content to follow her, and many other noble Lords, in paying tribute to the families of those who died at Hillsborough, to their supporters and, yes, to their lawyers as well, for their extraordinary campaign for truth and accountability. Their resilience over decades has reminded this House of what it means to demand justice.

As I close this debate for these Benches, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed from across the House. There has been genuine engagement with the substance of the Bill. That is precisely what this legislation deserves and, as my noble and learned friend Lord Keen said, it is what we intend to do as well.

There were so many fine speeches. With apologies to others, I will mention just a few. The noble Lord, Lord Roe of West Wickham, spoke powerfully of his experience at Grenfell and in the military. His speech showed how this House benefits from the personal experience of noble Lords. I listened very carefully to his speech, and I hope we will benefit from his input in Committee.

My noble friend Lord Arbuthnot raised the appalling treatment of sub-postmasters by the Post Office, which has had so many devastating consequences. Like Hillsborough, that campaign took far too long; like Hillsborough, that campaign is still ongoing. My noble friend knows more about the Post Office scandal than almost any of us—perhaps if I include the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, I can delete “almost”—and I hope we will benefit from his expertise as the Bill progresses. He made some important points on the scope of the duty of candour. The imputation of knowledge within an organisation sounds like a very dry legal point but, as we have just heard, it is not. It is the sort of thing that lawyers talk about, and people switch off, but in this Bill, it is a point that we need to switch on for, because it is very important.

The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, spoke powerfully about her own family’s tragic loss as a result of the infected blood scandal. I hope she will bring that experience and passion to our debates in Committee.

Finally—this is certainly not in any order—my noble friend Lady May, in addition to her remarks on the interaction between the Bill and the security services, to which I will return, expressed her dissatisfaction at the omission of any role for the Independent Public Advocate in the Bill. That was a view shared by a number of noble Lords across the House; it is clearly something that merits further debate. I agree with my noble friend that we should be aiming to seek a just and truthful resolution for victims as soon as possible.

About two years ago, this Bill was promised as one of the Government’s first Acts, but here we are in 2026 still debating it. That is because it is complex. But, as my noble and learned friend Lord Keen said, the manner of its scrutiny in the House of Commons is troubling. Significant amendments to the Bill, in particular those addressing the intelligence services and national security, were tabled with about 24 hours’ notice before Commons scrutiny began. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, was right to explain that the delay was because the issues are so complex. It is important, however, that there is proper scrutiny of a Bill, and it is a matter of fact that the Commons had next to no time to scrutinise those important amendments. It is therefore the responsibility of this House to provide the deliberate, forensic scrutiny that the Commons timetable did not permit. On that point, I am in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

The other point the debate raised is how generous the Minister has been with his time, especially over the Recess. It is appreciated and not taken for granted. I look forward to further interactions with him, both personally and with my colleagues, as the Bill progresses.

My noble friend Lady May, with all her governmental experience, made the point that cumbersome legislation can lead to errors in application and unintended consequences. As a lawyer, I respectfully second that. Clause 6 is clunky and should be looked at carefully to see whether it can be improved. There is a risk that the Bill may make some public officials less candid and less transparent.

One example is vetting information. If this is disclosed at inquiries, or if the net of those who have access to this information is expanded as a result of this legislation, this may deter future witnesses and also damage national security recruitment, because people subject to vetting may become less forthcoming if they fear that their vetting records could be publicly exposed in a courtroom or an inquiry hearing. Of course, to protect national security, the whole point of a vetting process is that it is both candid and thorough, but the Bill must not create a risk that people withhold information which would undermine security rather than improve it. That would also make it more difficult to recruit to sensitive posts. We simply cannot afford to deter talented people from joining the intelligence services, the military, counterterrorism or any number of other posts which require vetting, out of fear that their vetting history may one day be made public. I look to the Minister to provide reassurances on this point, and I can safely say that he can expect us to return to this in Committee.

I will say a few words about the definition of “duty of candour”, because that is one of the main aspects of the Bill. Clause 1 sets out the Bill’s purpose, but the duty of candour itself is articulated as requiring public bodies to act with candour, transparency and frankness, without favour to their own position. As my noble and learned friend Lord Keen set out, there are some fundamental questions about how this operates in practice. When is the duty triggered? Clause 2(3) requires someone to notify an inquiry that their acts or information may be relevant. What does “may be relevant” mean? What is the nature of that connection? Who assesses the relevance? How is the obligation switched off? This was another point made by my noble and learned friend.

Confusingly, at least to me, the concept of full disclosure is mentioned in the Explanatory Notes but is not in the Bill. In the Explanatory Notes it says that public bodies must act

“with candour; promptly and proactively; with full disclosure of evidence—and without favour of their own position”.

But that “full disclosure” is not in the Bill. What, in any event, does “frankness” mean? Is that meant to be the same as full disclosure? There is a concept in the law, as the lawyers among us will know, called full and frank disclosure. That means you have to disclose to the court information which is adverse to your position. Is that what is intended? If it is, this ought to be set out in the Bill. That point was touched on, with all his experience in the law, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. If I may say respectfully, he was absolutely right. At the moment, the language is vague, and that vagueness will create a risk of uncertainty for public authorities trying to comply with it.

There is also a question as to how that duty interacts with other duties: the NHS duty of candour under the health and social care regulations; the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which requires disclosure sometimes but also has exemptions from disclosure at other times; data protection law, which restricts disclosure of information; and legal professional privilege. How do all these duties interact? I am not expecting the Minister to explain that in his winding-up speech, but they are points that we are going to have to come back to in Committee.

Clause 10 imposes a duty on public authorities to establish and maintain codes of ethical conduct based on the Nolan principles. The peculiarity here is that this clause has the potential to impose significant administrative and financial burdens on public bodies, but it has not been included in the impact assessment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, explained, this can have a real effect, not only on the services which she was referring to but on other public services.

What work have the Government done to assess how many existing codes of conduct—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard—already comply with Clause 10? It seems that it has to be one or the other of these alternatives: either these codes of conduct are not burdensome, because the Bill will require only minor tweaks to what is already out there—in which case, do we really need primary legislation to achieve that objective?—or the existing codes of conduct are not compliant and we do need the Bill; in that case, why is the effect of all that not in the impact assessment? It will have a very significant effect on those bodies. Again, the Government have not provided any analysis of the impact, and we will probe that at further stages.

On the new offences of misleading a Minister and the destruction of documents, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, explained, the common-law offences were problematic. I will take a moment to pay tribute to the Law Commission, which is often unsung and should get a bit more credit than it often gets. We do not want to replace a problematic common law with a problematic statutory offence. The points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, merit careful attention from the Government.

We are concerned about whether the deliberate misleading of a Minister by a civil servant in the advice process, undermining the quality of government decision-making, would be included—a point made by my noble friend Lord Howard. Would the deliberate destruction of documents by a public official seeking to conceal evidence be included? If there is ambiguity in the current law, we should explore whether adding explicit statutory language would strengthen the Bill and provide greater clarity.

I will not repeat the points about self-incrimination made by my noble and learned friend Lord Keen in opening, but I will take 20 seconds to highlight that the Bill does not define “recklessness”. That means that the normal definition of “recklessness” will apply. Is that what is intended? Statutes sometimes have a specific definition of “recklessness” for the statute, so I ask the Minister to think about whether we need a particular definition of “recklessness” here.

To pick up a point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, you can spot good legislation like you can spot a good shot in cricket: by whether there is a good follow-through. There appears to be merit here in proper post-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and how it operates in practice when it becomes an Act. In the same vein of follow-through, there also appears to be merit, I suggest, in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, that a Government who are deciding not to adopt a recommendation of a public inquiry should at least give reasons for not doing so. Of course, they do not have to adopt a recommendation—they are not passing their pen to the person conducting the inquiry—but they should at least give reasons.

Of course, the changes we have been discussing today cannot ultimately be affected by law. What we all need is cultural change. Law has its limitations, and it is harder to change culture than it is to add to the statute book. The Bill addresses profound constitutional issues: the duty of the state to be honest with the public and the right of bereaved families to truth and accountability. Those are cross-party principles. Perhaps this is one of the rare occasions where I agree entirely with what the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said about how those principles command support across the House. Our role in this House, and what we will seek to do from these Benches, is to ensure that the Bill’s provisions are both clear and workable, and that they genuinely improve public accountability without creating unintended consequences. It is in that spirit that I look forward to further engagement with the Minister in Committee and beyond, and I am confident that, if we all work together, we can improve the Bill.

Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, who has pursued this issue with—if I may say so—characteristic persistence and conviction over many years, introducing substantially similar Bills on a number of occasions. These Bills undoubtedly raise important questions of law, policy and fairness.

I do not begin from the proposition that there is no problem to be addressed. There plainly are cases in which the breakdown of a long-term cohabiting relationship can leave one party, often the economically weaker party, in circumstances of genuine hardship. There also remains a widespread misconception that common-law marriage exists, and that couples who live together automatically acquire legal rights equivalent to those of married couples. They do not. That misunderstanding has been recognised by Governments of different political persuasions and is reflected in noble Lords’ speeches and the Government’s current consultation. The question is not whether there is an issue, nor whether some cohabitants deserve protection, but whether this Bill provides the right legal and constitutional answer.

I approach this debate not only as a lawyer but as someone who believes that there is an important constitutional principle which underpins much of our private law. That principle is autonomy. I would put it this way: the common thread running through our private law is not paternalism, but autonomy. The law exists to enable adults who are capable to make deliberate legal choices for themselves and not to relieve them of the need to make those choices. That principle runs through countless areas of our law. When two people decide to marry, they voluntarily assume a legal status containing both rights and obligations. If they prefer, they can enter into a civil partnership. If they want to regulate their financial affairs without marrying or without a civil partnership, they can execute an agreement or a declaration of trust governing ownership of property. If they want to decide who inherits, they can make a will. While they still have capacity, people now can determine who makes decisions on their behalf if they one day lose that capacity in the form of a lasting power of attorney. Each of those legal mechanisms expresses a simple but very profound principle. The law provides a framework, but adults make the choice.

This Bill, however, proceeds from a very different premise. In effect, it says that significant legal obligations should arise not because people have chosen to undertake them but because Parliament has inferred them from the existence of a relationship. That is a significant constitutional step. Of course cohabitation deserves respect. Millions of people choose to live together without marrying for different reasons. Some might marry later, some will never marry and some consciously reject marriage; that is entirely a matter for them. The issue is whether Parliament should transform what, at its heart, is a factual relationship into a legal status without the conscious and voluntary agreement of the people whose lives it governs.

That is why the difference between marriage and cohabitation is fundamentally important. Marriage and civil partnership are not simply descriptions of a relationship; they are legal institutions. They arise because two adults consciously decide to assume legal obligations towards one another before the law. Cohabitation is different. It is a factual circumstance. People may cohabit for months or years. They may intend eventually to marry. They may positively decide never to marry. They may have religious reasons for cohabiting. There could be financial reasons or family reasons. Those could also be reasons why they have chosen not to marry. They may simply prefer not to enter into a legal relationship. The reasons ultimately do not matter. The critical point is that the choice is theirs and belongs to them. I listened carefully to the very interesting speech from my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington, who made some of these points very sharply. He also pointed out very clearly that the characteristics of Jewish mothers are not limited to mothers who are Jewish.

One of the themes running through the noble Lord’s Bill is that after a period of cohabitation, or immediately where there is a child, the law should intervene by default unless the parties have taken positive steps to opt out. That reverses what I suggest is the proper constitutional starting point. I understand why the noble Lord has adopted an opt-out model; indeed, the Government’s current constitution proposes a broadly similar approach. But there are issues, and I look forward to the Law Commission’s report, with an opt-out model. The choice between an opt-in and an opt-out model is not a drafting detail but a fundamental issue. I am sure the noble Lord the Minister will have something to say on that. There may be a point between us on this.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

The noble Lord called me “the noble Lord”.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am sorry. I did slip into that. I know that sometimes people say “the noble Lord”; I was not trying to be rude or forget that the Minister is in fact a noble Baroness. I hope she will forgive me; it was entirely accidental and unintended.

My Lords, and the noble Baroness the Minister, there is another reason why I have reservations about the Bill, and this is a serious point. There is a constitutional principle engaged here as well, which is the rule of law. One of the points about the rule of law is that the law has to be certain. People have to know where and when legal rules, rights and obligations arise. The law should not leave people guessing where they have inadvertently entered into a legal relationship carrying significant financial consequence. Marriage does that; you know when a marriage begins and when a marriage legally ends. There is no uncertainty when those legal obligations arise. The same is true of a civil partnership, but this Bill is fundamentally different.

One of the first questions the courts will have to answer is: when precisely did these two people become cohabitants for the purposes of the Act? Was it when they first stayed together most nights, when they gave up one property, when they opened a joint bank account or when they began introducing each other as partners? Those are fact-sensitive questions.

To pick up a point made earlier, if you want to increase the role of lawyers and increase legal costs, you introduce a lot of fact-sensitive questions. The decision in Kimber v Kimber illustrates that there is no single, decisive test for determining whether two people are living together as a couple. I fear the Bill would increase uncertainty by increasing judicial discretion, and that makes outcomes more difficult to predict.

It is sometimes said that these proposals simply recognise the reality of modern life. I agree that, at least at some point, the law should come into some sort of contact with reality. But recognising reality is not the same as creating legal status. The Bill would come close to creating what has sometimes been described as marriage without consent. The state should be slow to impose legal obligations that people might have deliberately chosen not to assume.

Freedom means more than the freedom to make choices. It also means accepting responsibility for those choices. The law should support people in making informed decisions but should not too readily relieve them of the consequences of deciding not to enter into legal relationships carrying defined rights and obligations. That does not mean we should be indifferent to genuine hardship. Where children are involved, in particular, their welfare must be of the greatest importance. I look forward in particular to what the Law Commission says in that regard.

I will take a moment to pick up the points made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, about religious marriage and women being left in a very difficult position if they have had only a religious marriage and not also a civil marriage that gives them civil legal rights and protections. I think I am right in saying that the United Synagogue will not marry you religiously unless, at the same time, it marries you civilly. That is worth looking at; I know it has been brought before this House on previous occasions. It is worth looking at from the position not of treading on people’s religious freedoms but of protecting women in particular and making sure they have the legal rights they ought to as members of our civil society. But we do not need this Bill to do that, and we should not use it to do that.

While I have serious concerns about the Bill, I am also conscious that the Law Commission is looking at this very issue. The Law Commission is one of the unsung heroes of our legal and constitutional settlement. I look forward to its work, which is invariably of an extremely high quality. For those reasons, although I have concerns about the Bill as drafted, I look forward to continuing conversations around this issue and the Bill in light of the work of the Law Commission.

King’s Speech

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her speech outlining the Government’s legislative programme for the new Session in the area of justice and home affairs. I was particularly impressed, if I may say respectfully, that her speech managed both to defend her husband and to revive “Dixon of Dock Green”, a combination not often encountered in modern criminal justice policy. Like her, I look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, whose route to high office in the Church was assured when she was ordained in Liverpool.

I also look forward, of course, to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Case, whose route to becoming Cabinet Secretary was assured when he had as his doctoral supervisor, I understand, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield. Like the Minister, I also pay tribute to the noble Lord in what I understand is to be his valedictory speech. He is one of the House’s greatest historians and constitutionalists. His wisdom and scholarship have enriched our political life for many years. According to Wikipedia, which might be accurate on this point at least, when created a life Peer he said:

“I hope I can help the House of Lords a bit on constitutional matters. I’ll certainly give it my best shot”.


I think I speak for the whole House when I say that there are few, if any, better shots.

I am going to focus on the justice and constitutional aspects of the programme, and my noble friend Lord Davis of Gower will have more to say about the Home Office and immigration matters. Before turning to the substance, I cannot help observing that the gracious Speech is admirably confident in declaring what His Majesty’s Government “will” do; in current political circumstances, a little more conditional drafting might have been prudent. One is tempted to suggest that “may” rather than “will” is currently the operative auxiliary verb, because so much of the programme before us bears the unmistakable imprint of the current Prime Minister’s constitutional philosophy, although I doubt those words have ever crossed his own lips.

It is an approach to policy and political life in which the instinctive answer to almost every social problem is not stronger institutions, stronger families, stronger civic culture or greater democratic resilience but instead another statutory duty, another regulator, another criminal offence or another extension of state authority. This Government and their programme speak the language of moderation and pragmatism, but beneath it lies an unmistakably lawyerly belief that society can be reordered from Whitehall by legislative design and managed compliance. It is a vision in which politics becomes litigation by other means, and in which the state readily, steadily and constantly expands, while responsibility is transferred upwards from citizens and communities to officials, regulators and courts.

Before turning to the matters that divide us, I want to turn to a matter which ought to unite us. His Majesty chose to address antisemitism in, I think, the second or third paragraph of the gracious Speech, and with respect, he was right to do so, because the fight against antisemitism goes directly to the themes of justice, public order and national cohesion which underpin this debate. I am sure the whole House joins me in recording our gratitude to His Majesty for his visit to Golders Green last Thursday. It demonstrated moral leadership, solidarity and an understanding that the rise in antisemitism is not some marginal or community-based concern but a direct challenge to the values and cohesion of this country, and that challenge is increasingly visible on our streets.

On Saturday afternoon, London witnessed two very different marches. One march was under the banner of Palestinian activism and the other was addressed by Tommy Robinson, but there was one deeply disturbing point of convergence between them. At the first march, a banner declared, “End Zionist control of the UK government”. At the second march, a banner demanded, “End Zionist occupation of Britain”. They were different crowds and different political tribes, but it was the same ancient poison, the same conspiracy theory, the same obsessive belief that Jews—or Zionists, used as a euphemism—secretly control Governments, societies and nations. The far left and the far right now increasingly resemble two mirrors facing one another, reflecting the same hatred back and forth in slightly different language. One wraps it in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism, the other in the rhetoric of nationalism and racial grievance, but beneath both lies precisely the same antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The overnight news is no better. Police are investigating another violent physical attack in Golders Green in the early hours of this morning. The Metropolitan Police has asked the organisers of the Nova festival exhibition to take down the main sign and keep the location a secret—not as censorship but as a protective measure. The fact that an exhibition commemorating young people murdered at a music festival should require covert policing and counterterrorism precautions before it can safely open in London in 2026 is a disturbing reflection of the climate we face in Britain today.

His Majesty the King has, as I said, shown leadership and moral clarity. We now look to the Government to show leadership and legislative clarity. That means moving urgently to proscribe the IRGC in full. Last Thursday, in the other place, the Security Minister said that the Government would bring forward fast-track legislation “in the coming weeks”. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify later tonight precisely when the Government intend to bring this legislation before Parliament and whether it is intended to commence the Bill here or in the other place.

At the centre of the Government’s programme for justice reform is the courts modernisation Bill. We have been consistently told that these measures are necessary to tackle court backlog and restore confidence in the criminal justice system. We on these Benches do not dispute the seriousness of the backlog. Victims are waiting years for justice and defendants are left in limbo. There is a real risk that cases collapse under the weight of delay. But the fact that a problem is serious is no justification for some of the alarming solutions proposed.

A jury trial should not be viewed as an administrative inconvenience. It is a central safeguard of liberty in our constitutional order. The right to be judged by one’s peers has endured precisely because it protects the individual from the unchecked power of the state. It commands public confidence in a way that no technocratic reform or efficiency drive ever can or will. Indeed, the strongest arguments in favour of jury trial have come from the Government. The Prime Minister, in his previous incarnation as the Director of Public Prosecutions, said:

“The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance”.


Likewise, the current Lord Chancellor was described as finding juries in his 2017 review into racial bias in the criminal justice system to be

“the only stage … without racial bias”.—[Official Report, 2/12/25; col. 1750.]

He recognised that juries are not obstacles to justice but defenders of fairness and equality under the law.

One point that the Minister did not deal with but that I would ask the Government to think about is this: we have a judiciary in this country of the highest quality, but it is not reflective of the society in which we live. At the moment, we, so to speak, get away with it in our criminal justice system because juries are representative. If we do away with juries, and defendants walk in and see a judge and perhaps two magistrates who do not look like them, nor come from where they come from, speak like them or share the same life experiences, that will to lead to demands for different ways of appointing our judges and, perhaps, for radical reform of our judiciary. I gently ask the Government to think about this very carefully. We might not get what we wish for.

These same figures, the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor, who in the past were so confident in the strength of the jury system, now ask us to accept that juries have become barriers to efficiency. Under this Government, therefore, the proposal reflects not only a change of policy but a collapse in principle.

Let me take on the Minister’s point about the change of offences that go to magistrates and juries. Of course there have been changes over the years, but we are talking about serious cases. Under these reforms, offences that attract sentences of up to three years’ imprisonment may be heard without a jury. Many sexual assault cases will fall within scope, and fraud and theft cases may be heard by a judge alone. Those, if I may pick up the Minister’s phrase, are among the most serious cases. For the Government to suggest that these offences no longer warrant the constitutional safeguard of a jury trial is a profound shift in the balance between citizen and state; it reflects a stripping away of individual citizens’ rights.

That is particularly the case because one of the most alarming elements of the Bill is its retrospective effect: its impact on those already awaiting jury trials. Defendants who have already exercised their lawful right to elect a Crown Court trial now find that right about to be removed, according to the Government’s Bill, after the fact. Parliament is being asked to change the rules midway through the process for individuals who made their decisions based on the law as it stood at the time. That is unfair, and it will be seen throughout the country as profoundly unfair.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this debate is that the evidence, which the Minister did not really touch on, increasingly points against the Government’s case. Last week the chief executive of His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service confirmed that cases are being resolved at a faster rate than forecast because sitting days have increased and courts are operating more effectively. Lifting the cap on judicial sitting days—which the Government should have done when they came into office and not only after the Lady Chief Justice asked for it—has begun to reduce backlogs in key regions across England and Wales.

Of course we need more judges and more IT, but we also need more courts actually capable of sitting. Last week 10% of courts capable of sitting did not sit because there are such problems with the court service and the way courts have been maintained. These are long-running problems, but the answer is not to abolish juries; the answer is to deal with the criminal justice system.

There is a fundamental lack of legislative coherence at the heart of the Government’s policy. When justifying these reforms, the Lord Chancellor claimed that defendants are “gaming the system” by electing Crown Court trials for relatively minor offences. The Minister for Courts in the other place asked:

“Do we think that someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky from a minimart should receive the right to trial by jury?”


Well, I can answer her question: yes, her own Government think that. The Government’s Crime and Policing Act, which received Royal Assent a matter of weeks ago, restored low-value shoplifting offences to the ordinary either way regime, thereby preserving the defendant’s right to a trial by jury in the Crown Court for low-level shoplifting offences. Why were these low-level shoplifting offences sufficiently serious to justify a jury on an either way offence, whereas now we are told that they are so minor that jury trial should be removed?

What makes all this especially troubling is that the basis for this policy has fundamentally changed. When it was introduced, we were told that it was necessary to reduce the backlog; it was all about efficiency. The Criminal Bar Association, the Law Society and the Bar Council said, “Where is the modelling?”, but the modelling was not there. Now we are told something completely different: that it is a matter of principle. Sarah Sackman told the House of Commons that even if there is no backlog, this is what the Government are going to do. It is no longer being advanced as an emergency administrative response to pressure on the courts; it is being advanced as a matter of constitutional principle.

If this really was a principled constitutional change to the relationship between citizen and state, between accused and jury, and between the Executive and the administration of justice, why was there not a word about it in the Government’s manifesto? Indeed, even if the reason for it was to reduce the backlog, I have to tell the Minister that, when we sat on different sides, we were constantly being berated about the backlog by what was then the Opposition—the backlog was not a state secret. So, even if this is an answer to the backlog, it still should have been in the Labour Party’s manifesto. This is an emergency response. I do not know whether it has come from No. 10 or from the Attorney-General. I doubt, however, it will survive under any future Prime Minister.

This matters. The electorate were given no indication whatever that a Labour Government intended to dilute or curtail long-standing rights to trial by jury. Constitutional change in this country derives its legitimacy not merely from parliamentary arithmetic but from democratic consent. It is precisely in circumstances such as these that your Lordships’ House has, I suggest, a particular constitutional duty: not to frustrate government for the sake of opposition but to require Ministers to justify profound constitutional change openly, candidly and before the electorate, rather than presenting it after the event as an inevitable technocratic necessity.

The right to jury trial has endured for centuries because it protects the liberty of the citizen against the power of the state. Once diminished, it will not easily be restored. This House should therefore approach this element of the Government’s programme with the utmost caution. That is assuming, of course, that the next Prime Minister—who might be with us in a matter of weeks, and surely within months—does not conclude that Mr Lammy’s earlier instincts on these matters were rather sounder than his later ones and quietly leave these proposals where they belong, in what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has taught us is the long catalogue of constitutional mistakes wisely abandoned before they could do lasting harm.

Prisoner Release Checks

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

This context sets out the scale of the challenge, but I am clear that releases in error are not simply a fact of life. The public will not accept that and neither do the Government. We will get to the bottom of what happened in this case, and we will take whatever steps necessary to tackle the spike in releases in error, so that we can uphold the first duty of every Government, which is to keep the public safe from harm. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the Metropolitan Police, Essex Police and the British Transport Police for their prompt work in returning Mr Kebatu to custody. I am also grateful to the Home Office for eventually finalising Mr Kebatu’s departure and deportation last night. Most importantly, my thoughts and deepest sympathies remain with the 14 year-old victim and her family. I cannot imagine the anxiety and distress that engulfed their home last weekend.

Three points arise out of this sorry tale. First, it is a scathing indictment of this Government’s competence—or, I should say, incompetence—that it took a national outcry before they finally managed to deport Mr Kebatu, perhaps the only small-boat migrant who actually wanted to be deported. He returned to Chelmsford prison five times, asking to be taken home, and was turned away on every occasion. Only after his mistaken release and the public scrutiny that followed did the Government at last do what should have been done months ago. It has now emerged that the Home Office authorised a discretionary payment of £500 to Mr Kebatu as part of his removal, reportedly to discourage him from claiming asylum. The briefing has been put out that this was nothing to do with Ministers; officials used their own cashcards, we are told, to take the money out.

This is remarkable. I remember that under Prime Minister Blair the proposal was that criminals were to be made to pay their debt to society before they might be deported. The public officials would be marching the criminals to the ATMs. Under Prime Minister Starmer, we have the farce that offenders liable for deportation are forcing public officials to come with them to the cashpoint to take out cash in an attempt to prevent their causing more problems prior to deportation. This is a reversal of justice. It is hard to find words adequate to reflect this breakdown in basic operational competence.

There is a serious point here. I do not know whether the Attorney-General, who, I am afraid, is not in his place, has sanctioned this payment of public funds to Mr Kebatu in the hope that it would encourage him not to mount a legal challenge. If he has not, I would be interested to know whether the Attorney-General supports the use of public funds to encourage people not to make legal points in court. That seems to be a matter not only of a misuse of public finances but a real problem for the rule of law.

It is rather odd: we have the farce of a Government paying foreign offenders to leave our territory, and the same Government paying foreign states to take our territory. At the same time, in a few weeks that Government will be taxing everybody to pay for all these costs.

This failure appears in the context of the Government’s general failings to deport asylum seekers. The flaws of the one in, one out scheme have been exposed; the migrants sent to France returned to our shores within weeks on another small boat; and the flagship plan to smash the gangs was undone as soon as it started. It is little wonder that over 50,000 people have arrived on small boats this year, the highest number ever recorded. Only time will tell whether Mr Kebatu will soon be among them. If Mr Kebatu comes back, will the Government commit to sending him back again to Ethiopia, or will he be another litigant who relies on the ever-expanding jurisprudence of the ECHR? The public, and Parliament, deserve an honest answer.

The second point is the ineffectual release scheme. The Kebatu incident is not merely one man wrongly released but is symptomatic of profound problems in the prison system. The Government released at least 262 prisoners early, more than double the number the year before, and are yet to clarify how many remain unaccounted for. Will we get that figure this evening? We have not had it yet.

Only this summer, HMP Pentonville released 10 prisoners early in error, while 130 inmates, around 20% of those eligible for release, were held beyond their sentence because staff failed to calculate release dates correctly. It is simply not good enough to put it down again and again to human error. It is only now, when we have a public outcry, that the CEO of HM Prison and Probation Service is going to conduct a review on release checks. Why was that not done after the Pentonville fiasco earlier this year? The Chief Inspector of Prisons served an urgent notification on Pentonville for its inability to calculate release dates, but no action was taken. There has been no inquiry into the 262 mistaken releases, and, as a result, another sex offender was allowed to roam our streets. This belated review comes far too late. No amount of promises of future action should disguise the scale of the failure of this Government or absolve them of responsibility for the chaos that they have created.

The third point is in the context of the Sentencing Bill, which the Government are now going to present to this House, assuming that it gets through the other House. It is telling that the Government, and the Lord Chancellor in particular, have repeatedly expressed remorse at Mr Kebatu’s release, saying that every effort was taken to locate him. We are told that Mr Lammy was livid—that was the word used—when he was told of Mr Kebatu’s release from custody, and the Home Secretary referred to him as a “vile child sex offender”. She is right about that. But this Mr Lammy, who was livid about Mr Kebatu being released, is the same Mr Lammy under whose upcoming Sentencing Bill Mr Kebatu would probably never have gone to prison in the first instance because he was given a sentence of only 12 months. Under the new Sentencing Bill, if you get a sentence of only up to 12 months, you are presumed to serve a suspended sentence, which would have exposed him to the public rather than to a prison cell.

What is the Secretary of State’s position with regard to people like Mr Kebatu? Is the Secretary of State “livid” when they are not held in custody, or does he support his own Sentencing Bill, under which people such as Mr Kebatu would never have gone into custody in the first place? He cannot have it both ways. The truth is that the Sentencing Bill is not the silver bullet that will fix this Government’s mismanagement of prisons.

The Minister will no doubt say, as he often does, that they inherited a crisis. But when will the Government take responsibility for their own record? Since they came to power, the number of prisoners incorrectly released has doubled. How can those failures be anything but the responsibility of this Government? Just over a year into office, they have slashed prison education budgets by an average of 20% and sometimes by as much as 60%, which undermines rehabilitation, fuels reoffending and places further strain on a broken system. I know that the Minister, who I respect personally immensely, knows this, and I am sure that he is fighting the good fight within government. However, on the facts as we see them, I am afraid that he is losing that fight, and losing it badly.

The early release of Mr Kebatu should never have happened. The Government were given warnings and they were ignored. We deserve a Government who can keep order in our prisons and who will maintain integrity in our justice system. Until the Government accept responsibility and take decisive action, we cannot have confidence that those who commit crimes will be properly punished or that the rule of law will be upheld.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, to the authorities that finally apprehended and deported Mr Kebatu, and, indeed, the sympathy that he expressed to the young victim of Mr Kebatu’s offending.

The Secretary of State’s Statement was made on Monday 27 October, following Mr Kebatu’s mistaken release into the community on Friday 24 October. I fully understand the Secretary of State’s inability on Monday to give full details of what happened, but, with two further days, I ask how much more the Minister can say about how this mistaken release actually happened.

As we have heard, the Secretary of State apparently said that he was livid and he described the release as a blunder—and we accept entirely that he was right in both those things—but saying so solves nothing. At least there is now to be an inquiry into how Mr Kebatu came to be released and what the failures were, to be chaired by Dame Lynne Owens, former Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Director-General of the National Crime Agency. But setting up an inquiry does not solve the problem, nor does it answer the central questions that Parliament and the public are entitled to have fully answered now. First, what is the system and what are the safeguards currently in place for ensuring that only prisoners intended for release are in fact released? Secondly, what is the system and what are the safeguards for ensuring that prisoners destined for deportation are in fact deported and not released into the community?

As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said, the issue of mistaken releases is serious—and it is as serious as it is absurd. The number of mistaken releases has risen sharply: between April 2024—I remind the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that that was before the general election—and March 2025, it rose to 262 in a year, up from 115 the previous year, an increase of well over double. But this is a problem that simply should not exist at all. We are now told that a new checklist has been introduced for prison staff to follow before a prisoner is released. How can there not have been a satisfactory checklist system in place before this occurred?

Certainly, morale and the ability of the Prison Service to cope have fallen to an abysmal level, but that is not entirely the fault of this Government—it has happened over years under the previous Conservative Government. But this case and these figures demonstrate the scale of the challenges that the service and the Government face if we are even to approach getting these things right, and the resources and willpower required to repair our collapsed penal system, which are far greater than ever we envisaged.

There is the further issue of the £500. We now hear from the BBC that Mr Kebatu was paid £500 apparently for not making trouble and not disrupting his deportation to Ethiopia after he had threatened to do so. We are told that the payment was made by the removal team as an alternative to a slower and more expensive process that would have meant the cancellation of his flight and the arrangement of a new one. That is according to a spokesperson for the Prime Minister.

Apparently, a parallel was drawn by No. 10 with the so-called facilitated return scheme, whereby a foreign national who agrees to leave the UK voluntarily can be paid £1,500 so to do. That is an entirely false parallel that was drawn. Apparently, Mr Kebatu had attempted to apply for the facilitated return scheme but was not permitted to do so. No doubt that was because he was liable to be immediately deported anyway, quite apart from the embarrassment that all this caused. I ask the Minister to confirm that and to answer questions about that payment.

How did that payment to Mr Kebatu come to be made, since it was not under the facilitated return scheme? Is there some kind of what can only be described as a slush fund that can be used to buy people’s compliance with their deportation? If so, on whose authority is it expended? One can understand that it might cost a great deal more than £500 if a flight has to be cancelled and a potential deportee cannot therefore be deported, but surely Downing Street can see that paying off one deportee for not making trouble will lead to a whole number of others taking the same course.

Who makes the decisions in any particular case? What controls are there over such payments? How is this not rewarding troublemaking? Who decides in any given case the amount that is to be paid out, if not £1,500? Is it discretionary? Can it be more? Must it be less? These are serious questions about what I am afraid has the smell of being an arbitrary, uncontrolled, unprofessional and unacceptable system. Will the Minister please explain?

Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, looking around the Committee at the legal expertise present, I feel rather underqualified. However, I worked as a trustee for the Koestler Arts trust for some years, and that leads me to pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Hastings that what people in prison need to achieve rehabilitation—which I know that the Government want—is hope. What has happened as a result of IPP is that hope has been replaced by uncertainty and inequality. We clearly have to put that right.

The other reason that I wanted to speak today was that the late and learned Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Simon, was a close friend of mine. He made such an impassioned speech from these Benches that it made me feel that I too had to take up this cause because IPP, as we have heard, has resulted in enormous injustice. I return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, as did the noble Lord, Lord Carter, that that figure—that 80% are non-violent—is terrifying. I say to noble Lords on the Front Bench, who are distinguished in the law themselves, that if they could—and I really imagine that they will want to—shed some light on this, to seek by some way light at the end of the tunnel, that would be welcomed across the House.

I will not go on, because it has all been said and this is not the time to do so, but I say to noble Lords: please try to find a way forward here.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I too begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for his determination on and commitment to this matter, both today and on several previous occasions.

The injustice of the IPP sentence, and its effects, which continue, are not in dispute. As my noble friend Lord Balfe said, it is a miscarriage of justice, and we are dealing here with an injustice. I will just take a moment to recognise the work that he did to try to rectify another injustice: that of the refuseniks in the former Soviet Union. A number of noble Lords have paid tribute to the former Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, who, indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, showed guts in the work he did. The changes that he put in place, to an extent, ameliorated the situation.

Perhaps unlike some Members of the Committee, I note that this is not Second Reading, so perhaps I will be forgiven for not repeating all the points I made then. The Committee should be under no illusion about my position on IPP, which I hope I have made clear on a number of occasions. As my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier said, it is up to us on the Front Benches, so to speak, to try to sort it out, although the Minister has a singular advantage over me, in that he is in government and I am not. But he can take it from me that we will work constructively with him on this issue and we will continue to discuss it, as we have on previous occasions. To paraphrase a famous rabbinic phrase, even if we cannot finish the work, we none the less have an obligation to do what we can to progress it and make things better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I wanted to participate in this debate principally to congratulate my noble friend on his excellent introduction. Throughout the stages of the Bill, he has been clear and concise about the need for this legislation, and his contribution today was magnificent.

All the speeches have been clear about the total injustice of the situation in which we find ourselves. I have little doubt that the views are shared by the Members on the Front Bench. The two issues that I wanted to raise—first, the mental health aspects of the problem and, secondly, the fact that we can no longer rely on people to manoeuvre through this system under their own power—have been powerfully addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, so I will not repeat them. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will address them in his reply.

I emphasise to my noble friend the Minister that he has, in effect, said—he will perhaps tell me if I am wrong—that we do not need resentencing, as set out in this Bill, because the action plan will deal with the problem. Because of his particular position, he was brought into this House and into the Government to address this issue with the prison system alongside the other issues that we have. I stress—not in a very friendly way, although he is my noble friend—that it is really on his shoulders to get this sorted out. By rejecting the resentencing approach, the approach pursued by the Government has to work. It is on my noble friend the Minister’s shoulders to get this sorted out and to address the problems of mental health and the fact that large proportions of those remaining in prison are incapable of manoeuvring through the system by themselves. The Government have to provide them with support, either through the department or by funding some external agency that will give those suffering from this injustice a way out of the maze.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, given the way the debate on these amendments has gone—and with no disrespect to the noble Lord, Lord Woodley—I propose to say only a few words about Amendment 7, which is, as I understand it, the only live amendment, so to speak. It is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who, as is always the case, has given us a lot of food for thought.

There is no doubt that the mental health aspect of the IPP issue is very real, not least because, as I said at Second Reading, my concern is that there will be prisoners who have developed mental health problems while in prison and indeed because of the sentence itself. I think I said that that was a stain on the British state and, if so, I was right to do so.

My noble friend Lord Moylan is therefore right to highlight the issue of mental health. That said, it is not immediately clear to me, looking at the words of the amendment, that the conditions in (6B) and (6C) are necessarily the right conditions to be imposed in this context. Of course, I appreciate that this amendment was tabled to raise the issue rather than to focus on the particular words. I therefore look forward to what the Minister has to say about Amendment 7.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My Lords, the second group of amendments clarify the Bill’s clauses and make important changes to the wording. However, the Government maintain reservations about the risk to public protection that the Bill presents. I will respond to all the amendments in turn as I want to set out the Government’s position.

My noble friend Lord Woodley’s Amendment 4 sets out that an offender could not receive a harsher sentence under the resentencing exercise. We accept this principle, but it is already established by Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. We therefore do not believe that this amendment is required.

My noble friend’s Amendment 5 would allow a resentencing court to retain the IPP sentence where the offender might properly have received a life sentence and where, at the time of resentencing, they constitute a substantial risk of causing serious harm if released. Crucially, this would not prevent the resentencing of those who do not fall within these parameters and whom the Parole Board have previously assessed as not safe to be released. This is because the test being applied by a resentencing court would be less stringent than the Parole Board’s statutory test.

My noble friend’s Amendment 6 would provide the resentencing court with the option to issue an extended licence on release, if it deemed it necessary. Noble Lords are aware of the provisions in the Victims and Prisoners Act that allow for licence termination. This amendment would still involve the release of IPP prisoners who have previously been assessed as not safe to be released under the statutory release test. It would therefore not address our fundamental public protection concerns about undertaking a resentencing exercise.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for Amendment 7, and acknowledge her empathetic consideration for the individuals serving IPP sentences who require additional support for their mental health, especially the 233 individuals in secure hospitals. The amendment would allow a resentencing exercise to substitute an IPP sentence with a hospital order. A hospital order requires evidence of a mental disorder at the time of the offence being committed, whereas this amendment would lead to a hospital order being substituted when an offender currently has a mental disorder. As with earlier amendments, this amendment would remove the IPP sentence irrespective of the Parole Board’s assessment of an individual’s risk. Instead, the individual could be released by a mental health review tribunal. This process may not fully consider the risk posed to victims and the public.

IPP prisoners, like any prisoner, can require additional support for their mental health. They can already be transferred to secure mental health hospitals if this care is required, and I am currently working with HMPPS to explore how they can best be supported towards release when that care is no longer required. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about disengaged IPP-ers, as I refer to them, and hospital returnees. It concerns me that, for example, they may be returned to a category B local prison, which is not always the most appropriate place for them in their recovery. I am very keen to have further engagement with the noble Lord and others on that matter.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester for Amendment 8. Although the Government do not support the Bill, I understand the intention behind her amendment to assess the impact on services if the Bill were to become law. There is, however, already a requirement in the Victims and Prisoners Act for the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament about the steps taken to support the rehabilitation of IPP and DPP offenders. The annual report is expected to be published by Summer Recess and will show the progress that has been made.

Since the publication of the refreshed IPP action plan on 26 April 2023, there has been a 22% decrease in the number of those prisoners who have never been released. Additionally, when I became a Minister, 70% of IPP prisoners were in the correct prison for their needs. This has now increased to around 80% and HMPPS continues to make improvements in this area. This will help more of these individuals progress towards a release because they will be better able to access the support they need.

The second amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, Amendment 9, would reduce the licence period of one year for those who were subject to an invalid recall before the changes made by the Victims and Prisoners Act. The amendment does not define what would constitute an invalid recall, and my noble friend is perhaps referring to an unlawful recall, which would likely be the legal interpretation. If, however, he is suggesting scenarios where further information comes to light and the reasons for recall should be reconsidered, there is the risk-assessed recall review—RARR—process.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I add my note of sadness at the news of the death of Lord Justice William Davis recently and add my condolences to those of the Minister to his family upon his passing. He was a judge of great distinction. He led the Sentencing Council, which is the subject of this Bill, with very great distinction as well. He will be greatly missed.

Turning to the Bill, we made it clear that we did not agree with the Bill: we did not agree with the principle or that the proposed guidelines of the Sentencing Council threatened the notion of equality before the law. We believed, as is clear, that this was not a sensible use of emergency legislation and that the disagreement between the Sentencing Council and the Lord Chancellor should have been resolved without the need for legislation. We were concerned that the Bill had the potential to damage the Sentencing Council. In the event, we did not succeed in securing the withdrawal of the Bill, or in amending the Bill, which had Conservative support, so it will now become the law.

However, we can take two strong positives from the debate around this Bill. The first is the Government’s commitment to the Probation Service and to the importance of pre-sentencing reports in giving guidance to judges and providing consistency in sentencing. The commitment has been to having more reports of higher quality, backed up by increased resources. I thank the Minister for his kind words to me and others in opening this short debate; I say from these Benches what a credit he has been to his department and to this House in coming fresh to the House with his very strong commitment to the sentencing system and the Probation Service. His presence on the Front Bench has been a breath of fresh air for us all, and we are very grateful to him.

The second positive has been the recognition around this House of the enormous value of the Sentencing Council in giving independent, well-researched advice on sentencing to judges, with a view to promoting consistency not just in sentencing but in the approach to the factors that judges need to take into account in sentencing. I add my gratitude to Members around the House—both those with experience of acting in criminal cases and those with no experience of the criminal law or of law at all—who have stressed the importance of these issues to the development of the law and our criminal justice system, and, perhaps more importantly, to the maintenance of confidence in the criminal justice system in future.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the late Lord Justice William Davis. We learned of his death over the weekend with deep sadness. His integrity, clarity of thought and unwavering commitment to fairness made him a towering figure in the field of criminal justice. His loss will be felt across the entire legal and judicial community, although most immediately by his family, to whom we send sincere condolences.

From these Benches, I express our thanks to all those who contributed to this Bill in Committee and on Report. The quality of that debate, if I may respectfully say so, was exemplary, echoing and always meeting the high standards that this House sets when dealing in particular with matters of criminal justice, with the expertise we have on all sides of the Chamber.

These Benches offer our support for the principles underpinning this legislation. The more effective use of pre-sentence reports will encourage informed and consistent judicial discretion and lead to better sentencing outcomes, reducing reoffending, encouraging rehabilitation and serving the interests of public safety. While this Bill is therefore a very good first step, we look forward, together with other noble Lords around the Chamber, to other initiatives in this area. Sentencing remains a complex and sensitive area of the law because it touches individual lives and the life of the community. We believe that this Bill provides a strong foundation and are confident that it will be implemented to good effect. We therefore support the Bill and look forward to it being implemented as part of a justice system that is fairer, more consistent and more effective.

Finally, on a more personal note, the Minister noted that this was the first Bill which he has taken through the House. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, that we may disagree politically but these Benches recognise that the Minister not only shares a commitment to a fair and modern criminal justice system but has practical experience in this area. Where possible, we will of course work constructively together, as we did on this Bill.

[Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)]

My Lords, I first associate myself with the words of those who spoke in tribute to Lord Justice William Davis. News of his death on Saturday morning reached his fellow judges, and former judges, like a thunderclap. He really was tremendously admired and liked. He would take on any additional role that either I or, now, the Lady Chief Justice asked him to assume. He did so smilingly and always with good humour. He will be much missed.

I also associate myself with noble Lords who paid tribute to the Minister for the way this legislation has been piloted through Parliament. I say that despite personally not considering it necessary. It followed the firing off of a letter from the Lord Chancellor at the first whiff of political grapeshot, but we are where we are. In particular, I thank the Minister and his team for the personal courtesy that they showed me in discussing a number of issues that arose in the course of the Bill’s passage. It is perhaps a pity that the Government accepted no amendments in the end, from any noble Lord, but I entirely understand the political imperative for that. Like others, I congratulate the Minister, if that is not thought to be impertinent, on the way in which he conducted this Bill and, more generally, on his debut in this House.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 7th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I hope the House will permit me to begin with a word about the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. He was, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, remarked, a very great man. Outside this House, he was a brilliant Chancery lawyer and a wise judge. In this House, he was a wonderful person to have on your side and, I remember as a Minister, an intimidating, if always courteous, opponent to have on the other side of a debate. I will miss him. May his memory be a blessing.

The Bill has been introduced to remedy a problem, and it does more or less remedy that problem. But it could, and we say should, do more, because the immediate problem that led to the Bill has shone a light on a deeper issue of constitutional significance in the criminal justice system. On that point, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, although we differ on the substance of the Bill and what has led to it.

Not surprisingly, given the number of former senior judges from whom we have heard this afternoon, we have heard many excellent speeches. More surprisingly, given the number of lawyers who have spoken, we have kept more or less to time. But I immediately single out a non-lawyer: the moving maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Nichols of Selby, was a real privilege to listen to. I knew that you could get almost anything at Woolworths, but I did not appreciate that you could get future Baronesses as well. I look forward to hearing more from the noble Baroness during our work in this House in the coming months and years.

As we know, the Sentencing Council, an unelected body with eight members appointed by the Lord—now Lady—Chief Justice and six members appointed by the Lord Chancellor, proposed sentencing guidance that could have led to a divisive criminal justice system, one that risked dividing people by race, religion and identity. That point, it appears, is not now in dispute, at least between the two Front Benchers, given that first the shadow Lord Chancellor and then the Lord Chancellor herself publicly opposed the proposed guidelines.

Originally due to come into effect from 1 April this year, the proposed guidelines said that it will “normally be considered necessary” for judges and magistrates to request a pre-sentence report for certain cohorts of individuals. Those cohorts included the defendant belonging to

“an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”.

I should say at the outset that I too am not entirely sure what is meant in these terms by a “cultural minority”, if it is not already an ethnic minority or a faith minority. Are we talking about Morris dancers or devotees of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle? As the Bill uses the same term, this is not really a joke. If the Government want to put this phrase into legislation, they have to tell us what it means. I look forward to the Minister, to whom I have given notice of this and other points, giving a few examples, I hope, of a relevant cultural minority in this context.

What was the effect of these guidelines? It was quite simply that, if you were in one of these groups, a pre-sentence report would “normally be considered necessary”. What is the effect of that? It means that your chances of receiving a non-custodial sentence have increased. Pre-sentence reports, typically written by a probation officer, are key to judges and magistrates deciding whether to sentence an offender to prison or to a non-custodial community order, particularly in borderline cases. As a result, deciding which defendants are included in the cohorts where a pre-sentence report will “normally” be required, and which are not, can be key in deciding who goes to prison and who does not.

As a matter of statute, courts have to follow these guidelines from the Sentencing Council; they are not optional. Prior to 2009, courts in England and Wales were directed that, in sentencing, they must

“have regard to any guidelines which are relevant to the offender’s case”.

That was from Section 172(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. During the passage of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, the provisions concerning sentences attracted considerable debate, and the previous requirement for courts merely to “have regard” to any guidelines was replaced in Section 125 with courts being required to

“follow any sentencing guidelines which are relevant … unless … contrary to the interests of justice”.

That was replicated in Section 59 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

I should therefore now deal with some of the points made on behalf of, and by, the Sentencing Council. For the avoidance of any doubt, although this ought not to be necessary to say, I firmly believe in the independence of the judiciary. Indeed, I believe that we have the finest judiciary in the world. But that does not mean that one cannot respectfully respond to points that have been made publicly on behalf of the Sentencing Council to the Lord Chancellor. So, when the chair of the council, Lord Justice Davis, wrote to the Lord Chancellor on 10 March this year, he made the point that it is still possible for a judge or magistrate to order a pre-sentence report if they are sentencing an individual not captured within one of these demographic groups. That is, of course, absolutely true. But, with respect to Lord Justice Davis, it rather misses the point. It is the almost automatic nature of the pre-sentence reports for certain groups, and their discretionary nature for other groups, that is the issue at heart.

Similarly, in his later letter dated 27 March, the learned Lord Justice said:

“The crucial point is that a pre-sentence report will provide information to the judge or magistrate. It will not determine the sentence”—


a point made a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames. Again, that is true, but, again with respect to the learned Lord Justice, although a pre-sentence report does not mean that you will get a non-custodial sentence, it is certainly harder to get a non-custodial sentence without one.

To put it bluntly, if the Minister and I were each charged with the same offence, in the same court and with the same previous criminal record, these guidelines would have meant that I would almost certainly get a pre-sentence report, and he might or might not. That would mean that my chances of a non-custodial sentence were better than his, simply because I am a member of a minority faith community. That, I suggest, is entirely unjustifiable.

It is no answer to that point, I suggest, to say that there are disparities in sentencing in our criminal justice system for certain groups. There are those disparities, and we need to understand why they exist and work to eradicate them. But these guidelines are not and never were the answer to that problem, for three reasons. Like my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, I add that I am also indebted to Policy Exchange’s paper by David Spencer, and especially to the person who contributed research support for it.

First, the guidelines did not target only those groups where we see disparities. Black defendants, for example, do appear to receive longer sentences for the same offence than do white defendants. But, to take an example of a minority faith community, do Jewish defendants receive longer sentences? I have seen no evidence of that, and it does not appear that the Sentencing Council did either. These guidelines were therefore not properly targeted at what it said was the problem.

Secondly, as the Minister reminded us, the reason why black defendants receive longer sentences—to use the words of Lord Justice Davis’s own letter—“remains unclear”. What is clear is that the reasons are complex, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mattinson, reminded us, and do not—or certainly do not necessarily—involve bias on the part of sentencers.

I am sure that many noble Lords are, like me, devotees of the legal podcast “Double Jeopardy”, hosted by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, who alas is not in his place. As I see that the noble and learned Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is also not in his place, I feel sufficiently charitable to say that his legal podcast, “Law and Disorder”, is also very good—and sufficiently brave to add that it is almost as good as that of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald.

In his podcast recently—the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, touched on this—the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, pointed out that black defendants plead not guilty in a higher proportion than do white defendants, and of course sentences are higher if you are found guilty after a not guilty plea, because you lose the guilty plea discount. He pointed out that black defendants also elect for Crown Court trial proportionately more than do white defendants, and sentences are higher after conviction in the Crown Court than in the magistrates’ court. I am not suggesting those two points explain the entirety of the disparity; in fact, I am sure that they do not. There are likely to be a number of reasons for this disparity, which, I repeat, we should work to eradicate. On that point, I agree—and this is a sentence that I rarely utter—with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. But to get back in my normal furrow, where I disagree with her is this: you do not work to eradicate disparities by introducing additional and different discrimination into the system to somehow correct for those disparities, because there is one fundamental principle at the heart of our justice system, and it is this: equality before the law.

I am fond of the Minister, as he knows, so I do not propose to give him too hard a time in having to defend his boss, the Lord Chancellor. But the plain fact of the matter is that, despite having a representative on the council when the guidelines were discussed, the Lord Chancellor acted only once alerted to the problem by the shadow Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor has said that she was not personally aware of the guidelines until Mr Jenrick’s statements brought them to her attention, and of course I entirely accept that. However, given the seniority of some of the officials attending those meetings, the guidelines should have had warning bells ringing and lights flashing in Petty France. That they did not realise that these guidelines would not be acceptable to Ministers would indicate that there might be something of a problem of groupthink. To be fair to the Lord Chancellor, once she had been alerted to it, she got to grips with the issue, including, as I am sure that noble Lords have seen, by way of a polite but sometimes feisty correspondence with Lord Justice Davis, and this Bill is the result.

However, the real issue is the relationship between the Sentencing Council and the Government and between the Sentencing Council and this Parliament. I want to take a few minutes on this topic, because it is fundamentally important and often misunderstood. While I listened carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, as I always do, this is Second Reading and not Committee, so I want to take a moment to touch on this issue.

To say, as many do, that sentencing is a matter for judges and judges alone is too simplistic and, if meant literally, also wrong. Individual sentencing—that is, the sentence handed out in a particular case—is rightly a matter for, and only for, trial judges and magistrates. The Government must not be involved in that. But the setting of overarching sentencing policy is very clearly a matter for the Government and Parliament.

Here I must again disagree, and again with respect, with Lord Justice Davis, the chair of the Sentencing Council. In his 10 March letter to the Lord Chancellor, he said:

“There is general acceptance of the guidelines by the judiciary because they emanate from an independent body on which judicial members are in the majority. The Council preserves the critical constitutional position of the independent judiciary in relation to sentencing.


In criminal proceedings where the offender is the subject of prosecution by the state, the state should not determine the sentence imposed on an individual offender. If sentencing guidelines of whatever kind were to be dictated in any way by Ministers of the Crown, this principle would be breached”.


I respectfully disagree with Lord Justice Davis, for three reasons.

First, as I have said, we need to distinguish between the sentence imposed on an individual offender and the wholesale policy environment in which sentencing frameworks are set. The former is for the judiciary, and the judiciary alone; the latter is not. Parliament, and therefore Ministers and government, must have a critical role in setting overarching sentencing policy and frameworks. This Bill, for example, is entirely proper constitutionally. Indeed, for many decades we did not have a Sentencing Council at all; it is a creature of fairly recent statute.

Parliament obviously has an important role in setting sentencing policy. The upper limits for the sentencing of offenders are set by Parliament through statute—for example, in the Theft Act 1968. In addition to setting maximum limits, Parliament has sometimes set minimum limits for offences, although courts can often depart from that if exceptional circumstances exist. It is important that Parliament holds the pen because, ultimately, Parliament is accountable to the electorate. The public bear the impact of crime, and it is Government Ministers who are responsible for allocating public funds to the criminal justice system of courts, prisons, probation officers, police and lawyers. Those Ministers are ultimately accountable to Parliament and the electorate.

It was striking that Lord Justice Davis took the view in his letter—a point made in some of today’s contributions—that the inclusion of these specific cohorts in the proposed guidelines was not a

“policy decision of any significance”.

The fact that both the shadow Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chancellor immediately took a different view from that of the Sentencing Council, and that we now have this Bill before us, might indicate that it was in fact a policy decision of real significance and that government and Parliament are entitled to have a role in such policy decisions. I respectfully agree with much of the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.

Secondly, Lord Justice Davis’s letter implied that the judiciary accepts and follows sentencing guidelines only because

“they emanate from an independent body on which judicial members are in the majority”.

With respect, that cannot be right. Judges follow the guidelines because they are part of a legally mandated framework, set out in statute, ultimately derived from Parliament. So long as any body is properly constituted under an Act of Parliament, of course our judiciary would follow it.

Thirdly, on a point made earlier, the distinction which Lord Justice Davis draws between courts and what he calls “the state” is, I suggest, somewhat elusive. Courts are part of the state, as the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary’s own website makes clear. I assume that, when Lord Justice Davis referred to “the state”, he actually meant the Executive or the Government. I agree with him, respectfully, that the Government should not be involved in sentencing individual offenders, but the Executive, and this Parliament, should be involved in the sentencing framework and in sentencing policy.

To that end, I invite the Minister to let us know whether as part of their thinking about the Sentencing Council the Government are again considering a proposal, not taken up by the majority of the working group which led to the establishment of the Sentencing Council, that sentencing guidelines from the Sentencing Council before they are implemented should be subject to approval by Parliament. Would he also tell us whether the Government are considering whether the House of Commons Justice Select Committee, which at the moment is a statutory consultee of proposed guidelines after they have been formulated, might itself have a representative on the council?

These are constitutional matters. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, as to the answer to them, but we agree that these matters raise fundamental constitutional points. For those reasons, I look forward to working on this short but important Bill as it passes through this House. I am very grateful to the Minister for his engagement to date, and no doubt the House in all its quarters will debate in its usual way and seek to improve this Bill in its future stages.

Prisons: Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for bringing forward this Question for Short Debate. It follows a very good debate on the Private Member’s Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, and we can focus on this important issue again. I spoke in that debate at some length but I have limited time today, so I hope the Committee will forgive me if I do not repeat the points I made then.

We know the essential points. It is a long-standing issue and a real injustice. As has been said by a number of people, it is a stain on our justice system. Improvements have been made, yes, but more needs to be done. As my noble friend Lord Moylan said, we all want to make things better, especially the officials, and a lot of work has been done. I have to say, though, I am not convinced. I recognise the passion and commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, on this but I am not persuaded that comparisons with President Assad will necessarily advance the debate.

I hope the coughs we can hear are medical and not Whips’ coughs at this point. HMPPS’s report, which came out on 15 November, is very interesting. I would like to pick up a few points and I should make clear that because of pressure on my time I have not been able to give the Minister advance notice of these points. I am happy to have a letter in response and do not expect a detailed oral response.

On page three of the report, it says that HMPPS expects to see, as we all want, the number of IPP prisoners

“in prisons and the community”

—those on licence—reduced. Well, yes, but it is a little more complex than that. Do we want to reduce the numbers in prison, even if that also means increasing the numbers on licence in the community? Again, yes, so we may see the numbers on licence go up as a consequence of numbers in prison going down. Equally, we do not want to reduce the number of those in the community if they have been recalled to prison. We need to look at these figures carefully and not just in totality.

As my noble friend Lord Moylan asked, what is our aim here? What are we trying to do? I suggest that there must be an irreducible number of IPP prisoners, no doubt because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said, the state’s actions have, I am afraid, probably made some of these people un-releasable. I will not get into the resentencing debate today but we have seen in the data a significant decrease in oral review hearings before the Parole Board: there were 1,317 of them in 2018-19 but only 792 in 2022-23. That is a drop of 40%. The rate of release at those hearings has remained constant, so one of the reasons why we are getting fewer prisoners out is that we are having fewer hearings. Why is that? Is it because prisoners with difficult cases are not being brought forward, or is there some other reason?

The second point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, was about the number of re-releases following a recall. Prisoners are now spending nearly two and a half years in prison after a recall; I am concerned that that makes them very hard to release thereafter, once they are back in the prison system. Is this because there are fewer review hearings taking place? Are those two points connected? I suspect that they might be.

In the 30 seconds I have before the coughing starts, I want to make one last point; it concerns the number of IPP prisoners later convicted of a serious further offence. The report says that this is rare—less than 0.5%—but those are the prisoners out on licence. I am interested in the number of prisoners reoffending after their licence is terminated. We know that the reoffending rate in our criminal justice system generally is significant. I would be interested to receive—I have asked for this before but I still have not had it—a comparison between the general reoffending rate and the reoffending rate among IPP prisoners on release after their licence period. For comparison, I would also like to know the reoffending rate among prisoners whom the Government were happy to release early in the August scheme. Comparing those three points of data would be interesting.

To stave off any further coughs, I shall conclude my remarks at this point.